Tag: kennebunkport

This morning we attended services atSaint Peter’s By the Sea in Cape Neddicknow that the summer chapels are opening for the season. Next week our beloved Saint Anne’s will be opening where we’ll attend services all summer. So excited! I dream about it all winter. We stopped at Perkins Cove in Ogunquit on the way to church:

George H.W. Bush had always simply been a former President to me and Wayne, that is until we became members of St. Ann’s. We’ve had the honor to witness the Bush family as human beings and fellow parishioners, and are moved by how genuinely lovely they are. We had many conversations after that first time we saw them about how we both had been guilty of dehumanizing them over the years if we didn’t agree with decisions they had made as politicians. Seeing them as a close-knit family where former Presidents are loving fathers and grandpas was a teaching moment and humbling. Our hearts and prayers are with the Bush family as they grieve the loss of a wonderful human being, great grandpa, grandpa and father.

Wayne and I had an intimate wedding ceremony at St. Ann’s Episcopal Church in Kennebunkport followed by a steak and lobster luncheon at The Colony Hotel. We want to share some of our special day with you. (New pics added 9/25!)

At our summer church in Kennebunkport a small group meets once a week in the rectory for Centering Prayer, a meditative practice founded in Massachusetts by three Trappist monks in the 1970s. We meditate for twenty minutes by focusing on a sacred word of our own choosing, then watch a short teaching by Thomas Keating on DVD.

The first time I went last summer I was very intimidated by the prospect of a twenty minute meditation! Sitting in a quiet room alone listening to the “noise” in my head is old hat to me and I often mistake it for being productive. Making mental to-do lists, planning, lamenting the past, worrying about the future can happen in the most bucolic of settings. Sitting with a quiet mind? It’s a challenge, but meditation gives me moments of inner silence, the benefits of which are deep and lasting.

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Simple Living New England Est. April 2017

I'm Averyl. I grew up in NYC and moved from Manhattan to New England for college and grad school in 1985, then decided to stay! My husband Wayne and I (married September 2018) live in a mid-century cottage at the edge of our woods that's minutes from Portland, Maine and the sea. I enjoy blogging about nature, vintage treasures, spirituality, old-fashioned cooking, Yankee thrift and homemaking.Search for: